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Date added: 16.4.2015
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A provocative book that looks at power relationships, comparing human oppression of other humans to the human oppression of non humans, including misinterpretations of Darwin, namely social Darwinism. Spiegal concludes that these two forms of oppression are one in the same, that human rights and animal rights are inseparable and that neither can be accomplished alone. She writes:To deny our similarities to animals is to deny and undermine our own power. It is to continue actively struggling to prove to our oppressors, past or present, that we are similar to our oppressors, rather than those whom our oppressors have also victimized. It is to say that we would rather be more like those who have also been victims......[regards to oppression of blacks and animals] the cruelties perpetrated upon them take similar forms.The most obvious example of this is the treatment of African Americans. During the period of slavery and leading well into the middle of the 20th Century, poor white Americans took pains to ensure that they identified with the oppressors rather than forming a common bond of solidarity with the victims, African Americans. Eventually they too assumed the role of oppressors but themselves remained impoverished and ultimately, in their own way, oppressed. Spiegals point is that denying victimization and forming an alliance with the oppressors is to project your own suffering onto another group and ultimately leave both parties to suffer. One group suffers quite literally by the hand of the new majority and the latter suffers under the illusion that they are no longer victims, but new masters of oppression.This comparison is at first hard to digest. No one thinks of themselves as being oppressed by eating meat. However the author argues that we use similar devices to slaughter animals to those used on other races and peoples in the past. The slaughter takes place beyond are own lives where we never witness it (or can choose quite comfortably not to) and we are not a part of it- we distance ourselves from the act of killing. To aid this process, society and its institutions support the industries, encouraging our participation as consumers and convince us that any outsiders are part of fringe movements, extremists or far leftists and reassures the majority that they are right. This primary, underlying philosophy is that animals are completely inferior and that nature has intended the superiority of one group over another and therefore condones and allows any actions that insure the supremacy and position of that group.The most interesting part of this book is the section on the human desire to conquer and control nature and to suppress it, to, in a metaphor that the author repeats, break it in. The author also analyzes the racist terminology that compares blacks to animals. Perhaps most inspiring of all there are some quotes from the 19th Century, one by Abraham Lincoln, that realize that animal rights and human rights are connected and both form part of a larger struggle to end all oppression.Some portions of the book will be offensive to meat eaters and Spiegal does not hold back (she barely mentioning conscious consumers)leaving carnivorous humans to be silent witnesses or consciously oblivious partners of violence in her eyes. Other parts verge on the ridiculous, even for myself (for example the idea that breaking in a horse is unethical) However, though the content may appear hyperbolic it is these grander threads of ethical issues that get the reader thinking.Id like to end this review with one quote that stood out to me in particular, from Dick Gregory:under the leadership of Dr King, I became totally committed to non violence...animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life. Dreaded Comparison by Marjorie Spiegel
